Furniture

Welsh auction house Rogers Jones (26.4% buyer’s premium inc VAT) recently conducted its largest house clearance in over 30 years: the principal contents of Plas Teg in Flintshire.

Whatever interior statement one hopes to achieve, it is so often the furniture that really makes a room.

An unmistakable piece of modern furniture is the highlight of the sale on May 16 at Lempertz in Cologne.

Estimated at €1000, this 19th century Irish mahogany bureau with a link to Sir Winston Churchill sold for €9500 (£8000) at Fonsie Mealy (25% buyer’s premium) in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny.

A number of hall chairs of this idiosyncratic type from the early years of the ‘age of mahogany’ are known and have appeared on the market.

What a difference three years and an estimate can make.

The second part of the Beedham Collection – a fine array of early oak furniture and associated works of art from the Derbyshire dealing family – came for sale at Bishop & Miller (25% buyer’s premium) in Glandford, Norfolk, on March 19.

The contents of the Bishop’s House in Newry, standing on the Clanrye river in counties Down and Armagh, were sold by Victor Mee (20% buyer’s premium) earlier this year.

A recent sale at Burstow & Hewitt (20% buyer’s premium) in Battle, East Sussex was led by six Danish rosewood dining chairs designed by Niels Otto Moller for JL Moller.

The few surviving pieces of furniture designed by Archibald Knox were mainly produced at the Sunnyside Workshops in Douglas, founded by Knox with his friend and patron Wilson James Ashburner in 1899.

Collection amassed by Christie’s veteran Hugo Morley-Fletcher includes ‘special group’ of porcelain

As with Pierre Jeanneret and his vision for Chandigarh in India, Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) is famous for his involvement in the city of Brasilia as chief architect.

The Art Deco design movement found a unique expression in Cotswolds School furniture - one that sought to blend clean lines with traditional English materials and craftsmanship.

Auctioneer and valuer Clive Stewart-Lockhart has written a new biography of one of British Art Deco’s foremost figures - his great aunt Mary Stewart Lockhart, better known as Betty Joel (1894-1985).

The Cotswold Art & Antiques Dealers’ Association (CADA) held its first London fair - Cotswold Art Antiques Chelsea - at Chelsea Old Town Hall on the King’s Road from March 20-23.

The London-based design company Isokon, which produced furniture by Wells Coates and Marcel Breuer, and Gerald Summers’ firm Makers of Simple Furniture both explored the radical possibilities of lamination.

With the first CADA fair to be held in Chelsea receiving positive feedback (see story also in this edition), we now look ahead to a much more local event available for traders

The craftsman-made Yorkshire oak furniture of Robert Thompson continues to be in high demand at auction.

Georgian giltwood mirrors were the big winners at Doyle New York’s (28% buyer’s premium) January 28 auction of British and European art and antiques.